Conan O’Brien returned to late night with his new talk show Conan on cable network TBS, and drew a whopping 4.15 million viewers! Other notable numbers include the coveted demos 2,451,000 adults 18-34 and 3,285,000 adults 18-49. Conan was easily able to overtake the other late night competition including Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show, Late Night with David Letterman, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert.

Here are the numbers:

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno – 3.5 million, 952,000 in 18-49

Late Night with David Letterman – 3.4 million; 1.3 million in 18-49

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – 1.3 million (down 13%); 690,000 in 18-49

Of course, Conan’s first show is something everyone needed to see — it was must-see water cooler programing. Many fans called the first show a return to form, while some critics have noted that it doesn’t appear to be much different from his previous late night show (ie it’s not something new or fresh, but more of the same).

In recent years, American audiences have slowly lost interest in the traditional late night talk show. Cable entries like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert seem to be innovating in the area where the network counterparts are not. It will be interesting to see if Conan’s ratings keep up in the coming months. It’s clear he has a rabid fan base, but will they be lulled after a couple weeks of programing?